I did update my blog with all the latest e-mails.

I have a further update.  Bill went to his annual neuro check-up yesterday up at the Movement Disorder clinic.  She has a few patients that are going the un-medicated route, and since she is a baby doctor, she is respectful of that position.  We were most interested in his scores on the scale.  She said he basically held his own this year, and his score was extremely slightly worse than last year.  She said she scored his walking as better, and his arm swing as a little worse, and most of the other scores stayed the same.  She didn’t give us the actual numbers.  I should have asked her if she ever saw any un-medicated patients whose scores improved, but I didn’t think of it at the time.  Bill said it was what he expected.  I was a little dissapointed, because I wanted his progress to be measurable.  I expect that we might see that at the next appointment next June.
Carol
jj to carol

if he didn’t get worse, he’s getting better. that’s very exciting progress.  if his walking is better, that’s really huge, as that’s the thing that tends to become measurably worse.

give it time. i’m pleased with his progress.

carol to jj

Yes, I know I am impatient.  Sigh.  How are your other emSpace people who were stuck in partial recovery coming?  How about the research with HeartMath?  Has that taken form yet?  That must be a very interesting project.

Carol

jj to carol

we’re tested the emwave here in santa cruz with about ten people. based on those results, we’ve devised a program. we’re launching the research program this week in amsterdam.

we’ll let you know.
many variations amongst PDers. but we’ve noticed that the variations in advanced mode do correspond to recovery rates and the ability to feel the heart being bigger and smaller – or not.
green or red doesn’t matter. what matters is heart rate variability. especially if a better (lower) score in HRV makes a person go from red to green. if this is the case, we want to know, but the PDer needs to work on the HRV score, NOT on red or green.
the problem with PD is not imbalance between parasympathetic and sympathetic. it is between dissociated and sympathetic. the PDer needs to learn to not feel fear when he’s in red or when his HRV rate improves (gets lower).

carol to jj

Very interesting.  I read your response to Bill after he came back from his morning yoga.  He said he understood how to get to green from red pretty easily now, but how to change the HRV still remains mysterious to him.  He equates the feeling he needs to expand his HRV with a feeling in his abdomen.  I keep telling him it is in his heart, but just last night I read in BKS Ineygar, ” The diaphragm, according to yogic science, is the seat of the intellegence of the heart and the window to the soul.  During stressful situations, however, when you inhale and exhale the diaphragm becomes too taut to alter its shape.  Yogic exercises address this problem by developing elasticity in the diaphragm, so that when stretched, it can handle any amount of stress, whether intellectual, emotional, or physical.”  In light of that reading, perhaps Bill is correct in his thinking that the key is in his lower stomach.  Today, while he works, he is going to keep the emSpace on and try to cultivate the ‘butterflies’ in the stomach feeling of great excitement and anticipation, and see if his HRV can expand with that.

Thanks again for all your love and support,
Carol

jj to carol

YES! many people , when i work with them on practicing to feel the physical sensations of old, negative experiences (not to dwell on them, but as an exercise in feeling) , are surprised that these experiences create sensation in  their stomach or abdomen. BUT, if they allow themselves to actually experience this abdominal or stomach pain, and keep pondering the experience or otehr, more subtle experiences, they find that the physical, actual pain , at the crux of the matter, is around their heart. sometimes it’s in the throat, prior to being experienced in the heart.

but feeling the variability in the “stomach” is an important step towards being able to feel it in the heart.
yes, those yogic teachings are absolutely correct. life force must penetrate the diaphram as it moves up from the liver to the pericardium, and hence to the lungs, head, and heart, as it circulates through the body. the posture of the pericardium then determines how much energy will flow int which direction as it flows away from the heart.

hope this is helpful. jj

We went to the beach and Bill got in some nice beach walks.  We left hastily, and I forgot to pack his ’sleeping magnet’.  It didn’t matter.  The ocean lulled him to a sound sleep both nights.  I think he is beginning to get better sleep naturally.

His arm swing is beginning to change more.  The elbow is more relaxed.  Not straight yet, but closer than it was.  Also, his hand looks more relaxed as well.  It is not so much of a ‘claw’ as it was.  It still hangs differently than the other arm, but instead of such a stiff appearance, it hangs in a limp fashion, and swings a little bit on its own.

This week as he worked at the computer, he was very excited that he was sometimes able to ‘relax’ his tremor and have a little more mouse control.  I am trying to get him to work with the emSpace on, since this is when he is still in only 3 or 4 HRV, but it is somewhat of a challenge in that the wires can get tangled which adds to his frustration.

He is really enjoying starting each work day with his 6am yoga intensive.  He is very excited to have his favorite yoga teacher back from Turkey.  She has been gone for the last 6 months and told him that from her memory, his balance and tremors have improved noticably.  It always makes him happy to have outside cooboration, because his intuition is not yet back to 100% yet.

love,
carol

jj to carol

yep! your email is so rewarding.

isn’t it strange how the body recovers so slowly, so steadily, and not necessarily in a manner that is pleasant – back pain, arm pain, etc.  and yet, this is the pattern. i would like to hope that recovering PDers could find strength in knowing that these pattern indicate recovery. instead, most of them revert to “oh no! back pain! on top of all my other problems! darn!”
isn’t that strange. it does seem to be part of the syndrome, esp if the person still allows his mind to choose negative conclusions for whatever is going on.

i hope you will put the email that you sent to me onto your blog. it is GREAT. classic recovery.

also, that he’s starting to enjoy his life a bit more. that’s very significant.

love,
jj

Hi jj,

The last couple of weeks have been difficult for Bill.  He has had a lot of back pain, and we are not sure if it is recovery related or just  the stress and strain of life, or a combo.  His lower back has hurt off and on for many years, but it has become a little chronic lately and he has seen his chiro, and been treated by Melody, and it still hurts.  As it hurts, he snivels and seems to have less bandwidth for expansion.  He says his PD symptoms are as bad as they have ever been, including tremors and stiffness in hands and gait instability.  I think he is back on the ’stoic’ approach to the pain.

On the other hand, he seems to continue to make small progress on the emWave.  He is more in green when he works, but continues to be in a narrower hart rate expansion (either 3 or 4, occasionally 2)  However, there are more times when he is not working that he is surprised to be in green/1, or green /2,  when he is sitting still and not moving.   He  used to equate green 1 primarily with walking.  I am trying to get him to keep it on more while he works, so he can move up a little where he seems to be stuck the most.

He is really looking forward to doing a yoga intensive with his favorite yoga teacher who just returned from 6 months in Turkey.  He started it today, and will be doing it 5 days a week early in the morning.  It started this morning, and he really liked it.

I am a little tardy in updating my posts to the blog.  I will try to get updated this week.

jj to carol
the back pain of recovery is very specific: it hurts to bend forward, and it feels better if you stand up very straight. if this is the nature of his pain, it will not be aided by anything but time.  but it is a highly specific symptom of recovery, and is not typical of the back pain that some PDers have.

glad that he’s getting more into increased  HRV. let’s give it a few more weeks, eh?>

hope this is helpful,

carol to jj

That definitely describes his pain.  He will be relieved to hear this!

Carol

jj to carol

this type of back pain is described in grinding detail in the recovery symptoms section of the book. it’s in the chapter with muscle soreness.

love ya!

carol to jj

Bill was thrilled to hear about what his pain is.  His mood lifted, and he slept a lot today, and did yoga this morning, exercise and then qigong until 9 pm with a smile on his face.  When I forwarded him your reply, he was dismayed at my characterization of his sniveling.

I remembered the part about the people that folded in half, and that seems opposite, but I suspected recovery was at least a part of what he was going through.

His tremor just goes and goes all day, exhausting him.  But if I touch it, I can’t really feel any electrical problems, even the weird energy balls on the bottom of his feet in the liver channel aren’t there any more.  It stops so easily when I touch it.  It seems like a memory, or a phantom of some sort, kind of like the pain people feel when they lose a limb. But it drives him nuts, just like the people without their limb.

Carol

jj to carol

tremor can be strongly habituating. some people even miss it , at first, when it first stops. they know that sounds crazy, and they’re glad to be rid of it, and yet… it seems as if something is missing.

this takes time.
jj

June 2 carol to jj

We went on a really long walk on Sunday night.  I was hobbling at the end of it, and Bill was complaining of both his hands feeling really really stiff and throbbing.  He was also rubbing his bicep on the right side.  It seems that more of the physiological symptoms are really starting to unwind for him!

We are starting to make walking/talking dates with friends to get together since so much of our evening time is spent in yoga classes or going on walks, we never have time to clean the house and make a meal as a social event.  Now that the weather is nicer, it is a fun way to get together with friends we rarely see.  I have been corresponding with my friend from Houston who recovered, and he seems to think that long walks were very beneficial for his recovery.  Since that is where Bill is almost always green/1, it makes sense to me!

The way Bill described how the emSpace alerts ’surprised’ him were these ways:
1) When he first got the machine, getting to green seemed more to do with yogic breathing than thinking of love, peace, joy, etc.
2) When he used it when working he could get it to go green even when he was feeling stressed and shaky and had tension in his body.
3) When he started in on the advanced mode, he discovered that walking was the easiest way to get to green/1 (it still is)

Other updates from the weekend were that he said he had a better consciousness even when he was not on the machine he felt more ‘flow’ and had long periods of time when he forgot completely about having PD.

What I noticed was he continued to shake most of his waking hours, unlike the two days we spent at the beach in the early spring when he was able to stay calm the whole time.  I know the proprananol is supposed to be fast acting, but do you think the withdrawal could take longer for some symptoms?

When we got home last night, we went for a long walk and then settled in to some ‘veg’ time in front of the TV.  He continued to shake.  When I barely touched his hand in an extra light tui-na sort of way, it stopped shaking for the rest of the evening.  When we went up to bed he started shaking a tiny bit, and I touched it again and it stopped.  However, shortly after that he started shaking quite a lot.  I asked him what he was thinking about, and he said he was just going over some plans for the next day.  When he thought about playing music, the shaking stopped, but when he thought about which cuts of his music he wanted to link to on his webpage, the shaking would start up.  He felt no anxiety or tension or conflict around the thoughts, and yet the shaking started up when it was about doing something the next day.  List sort of thoughts.  It was curious.

We saw Melody on Friday, and Bill complained of a very sore right hip and continuing back pain.  We wondered if the hip had to do with the big lack of qi in that spot a few months ago.  Perhaps it was healing an old injury.  The lower back pain has been bothering him for some weeks now.  I know a lot of people complain about it on the PD site.  What has been your experience with lower back pain and recovery?  Melody thought it may be a combination of recovery and injury.  She did some yang tui-na and back needles.

Carol

jj to carol
thanks for the feedback.

bill’s answers suggest that he is getting into green via shutting his heart down. that’s why he can get green via yogic breathing but not with love peace joy, etc.

the heart will be coherent (patterned) if a person is in parasympathetic mode OR if he is in heart-dissociation mode.

but when  using advanced mode on the emwave, he can see that getter a better score in terms of HRV will usually give him red, not green. with a healthy person, a better HRV score will correspond to more green, less red.

so from now on, what he needs to work on is advanced mode. he needs to learn how to be in green despite having the highest HRV possible, and he needs to learn how to have a high (good) HRV even when he’s stressed or dealing with work. *anyone* can be calm when he’s pretending to be dead.  but that’s no good, and that resembles parkinson’s.

so from now on, it’s all about becoming familiar with how it feels when the HRV is at its highest -whether or not he can be in green during those times. the people at heartmath said that, for people who go into red with higher HRV, the problem is that they are no longer familiar with the sensations of high HRV,. and by virtue of unfamiliarity, it seems scary (red).  over time, as familiarity with high HRV grows (usually takes about 6 weeks), a person can learn to be coherent and also high HRV.

that’s the game plan!
Jj

Carol to jj
OK!

His answers reflected the first impressions he had and 1) and 2) were both from before he even started in advanced mode.  He is trying to expand HRV all the time now, and is much more successful in getting to green/1.  He can do it nearly 100% on a walk and at some other less stressed times, but he can now work at in 3 or 2 HVR while working and more in green at the same time.  I think he knows that the goal is green/1 all or most of the time.  He is making progress, it just seems madingly slowly, but really, for a lifetime of bad habits, it is moving quite quickly.

We had the gizmo on his belly while Melody and I were working on him, and she got him talking.  It would be green/1 while he was talking about being in nature, or music, and when he started talking about work, or presenting, it would narrow the HRV and move into red sometimes.  It was very interesting to see it change in regard to subject matter he was talking/thinking about.

Carol

Jj to carol
sounds like bill is really understanding the goals and making good progress towards achieving them. that’s so great!  and it’s great that he can see how he lets himself slip into what is essentially a defensive autonomic mode when he’s thinking about work or presenting. i’m really excited by the very rapid progress that he is making.

and i’m SO grateful for the journaling that you’ve been doing. i won’t be surprised if your joint work is going to be very important and inspiration for many people someday.

blessings,

jj

May 29 carol to jj
I hope it can be a beacon of some sort.  I am very discouraged at the reception from the people at the PLM site.  They said I was soliciting when I linked to your website, and by using the word ‘recovery’ I was giving people false hope.  I hope we can get to the point where it is real hope.  I am so disheartened at the state of ‘medicine’ today.  I do have a bit of hope that it is starting to change, but I see so many people being hurt by it in the meantime.  There are so many young people handed dangerous medications for so many things.  The young people that are newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s and have young children they are raising make me want to cry out.
sadly,
carol

I’ll ask him your question when he has a little more time to reflect.

Carol

May 23 jj to carol
i realized, after answering you, that i hadn’t addressed another issue: getting to green on the emwave doesn’t really have anything to do with having injury-based, idiopathic parkinson’s disease. i think that i would have *always* been able to get high scores on HRV and coherency. i have two new patients who both have this type of pattern: effortlessly get green and stay green, and high heart rate variability.

the emwave is only going to help people who have some degree of psychogenic parkinsonism from shutting down their own heart. not everyone with parkinson’s has this. i do not think that i had this pattern. that’s probably why i recovered so easily. of the two dozen people who have recovered in a matter of weeks or a few months, they were all able to  understand the nuances of heart “feeling” – even before they recovered.

i think that, in years to come, MDs are going to have to learn how to differentiate between the many illnesses that currently are given a dx of PD at first glance, including multiple system atrophy, extrapyramidal syndrome, and others. these are illnesses that don’t respond to L-dopa, but MDs usually call them parkinson’s anyway, because, since they are all incurable, it doesn’t matter what they are called. they are often only correctly dx’d following autopsy. in years to come, as we develop cures for these various illnesses, correct dx will become important. until then, the MDs don’t see that it really makes any difference. they can call it parkinsonism, and leave it at that.

Bill’s cardiologist was delighted to be able to prescribe Bill a drug
without him refusing it and me e-mailing her studies on why it was
dangerous.  We also showed her the emSpace and sent her to the
website.  She is intrigued.

She told us that she had discussed his case with her cardiologist
husband, and they were both so impressed with how he was doing that
they have been going to an acupuncturist lately!!!!!

Bill tried inderal twice over the last couple of weeks on occasions he
had to be in public meeting with colleagues who he didn’t want to tell
he had PD.  The first time (2 weeks ago) he only took 10mg, and didn’t
feel much effect.  Yesterday he had to go to an all day meeting so he
took 10mg at 8am, 10mg at 9am and another 10mg at noon.  The day went
very well for him all day long up until late in the evening. (I think
the drug is only supposed to be effective for 4-5 hours)  He said he
was more able to relax and do the heart exercises without the
distraction of the tremor. And he went to his difficult standing
meditation Qigong class that goes to 9 in the evening, and it went
better for him as well.

We were both wondering if there might be an unpleasant after effect.
And, sure enough, this morning he woke up and felt quite a bit more
jittery than usual.  I worked on his hand a little before he got out
of bed, and he went on the emSpace while he read the paper.  I noticed
that he is much more able to expand his heart a little bit to a stable
3 while staying in the green (he did not take any this morning, but
plans to take it with him to a 2 day conference on Monday, this was
his trial run).

My gut tells me that using it regularly would be a crutch, and slow
down his ability to heal himself.  However, since he has improved his
HVR after using it, I am questioning this reaction.

What are your thoughts on this?
Carol

Jj to carol May 14th
beta blockers, used over the long term, tend to create a feeling of inhibition in HRV. people say that they feel more emotionally numb, and cannot experience the full range of feeling that they used to have – this makes sense – this is exactly what beta blockers are intended to due …they inhibit the range of heart rate variability.

there can be a rebound effect with this drug. in other words, if used only once in a while, a person can notice increased heart rate variability the next day.

in a person with what heartmath calls “maladaptive response,” a situation in which familiarity with a pathological heart pattern makes a person uneasy when they experience a healthy heart pattern ( and which describes people with parkinson’s), this post-beta blocker increase in heart rate variability comes across as a problem – in bill’s case, might make  him more jittery.

heart math does work with people for whom increased heart rate variability is unpleasant (makes them uneasy). it’s the same practice as anyone else: the patient just has to keep working on spending time in a coherent state and learn to feel safe in that state. the founder of heart math told me today that a person who does the work regularly and with sincerity, can learn to modify within six weeks a maladaptive psychological preference for the “familiar” but unhealthy mode of incoherence. then again, he understandably could not offer a time frame for someone with Parkinson’s, in particular.
still, based on what i told him about what i knew about parkinson’s personality, he seemed to think that working with the emwave might help a person turn around the maladaptive preference.

hope this makes sense.

love,
jj

may 14th carol to jj

Yes it does.  It seems to make sense to limit their use to the
minimum, so the heart rate variability can continue to improve with
practice, and not be inhibited.

It will be interesting to see where we are after six weeks of emSpace.
He is using it about 2-3 hours/day.

It is nice for him to have a tool to relieve his presentation anxiety
for the short term.  I will urge him to use it as judicially as
possible.

THANKS!

May 14th jj to carol
2 to 3 hours a day?  excellent.

i’m so proud of him. give him our love,
jj and the team

May 15 carol to jj:

Last evening, on a walk he pulled it out of his pocket and it was on 1
and green for the first time!  We walked to the movie theater, and it
was in his lap.  At an emotional moment I looked over and it was on 1,
but red.  In the morning as he reads the paper it is still usually on
3 or 4 green, but now occasionally it will up go to 2.  He is
definitely on a roll with the gizmo!

Symptom wise, his voice is back to normal timbre, and his tremors
still bug him.  He started to notice a little bit of foot drag a few
months ago, after we saw you.  He says that is still there, but to me
I have never noticed it and he seems to walk very well and full speed,
but the arm swing and claw hand still appear about the same to me, but
seem a little better to him.  He notices smells a little more, but
they are still faint.  Typing and computer use is still very
frustrating to him, but he was delighted to hear that my new friend,
the lawyer from Houston, can type 110 words a minute!

Love to you and the whole team!
Carol

May 20 jj to carol:
VERY interested to hear how bill is doing with the emwave.
in particular, i am keen to hear how he’s doing with the advanced mode – what is his relationship with increased heart rate variability (HRV )and the green light?

would he say that activities like walking or enjoying music or other enjoyable events, or any event that allows him to record increased HRV also cause him to be more in the red than in the green?

next, and this is a VERY important question, could bill possibly try and put into words what he meant when he first started using the emwave and said, after figuring out what emotional/mental state was best for  making it stay green, “it’s not what i thought.”  that is a hugely important phrase.  if he could possibly put into words what he meant by that, it could contribute to work that might someday help thousands.
really, really important.

the heartmath people did say that it can take six weeks for a person to begin to unlearn a maladaptive brain habit.
(a habit in which being in higher HRV causes a person to be *less* coherent.).

love,
jj

May 20, carol to jj:

Bill is traveling this week, so I will ask him for his words on that when he returns.  As I recall, he expected that he would be in 1 when he was not tremoring and meditating, but was surprised when it expanded HRV was while walking and outside.  He said he now understood better what you meant by ‘doing the rhumba’ was the state to cultivate, and how important ‘being in the world’ was.

As I observed him, I couldn’t help think of the ‘inner smile’ and ‘outer smile’ metaphor from the qigong writings.  Green seems to be the ‘inner smile’ or the coherence of the rhythms of one’s own body, and high heartrate variablilty (1) seem to be the ‘outer smile’ or coherence with the rhythms of the external world/universe.  It seems like maximum health is the balancing of internal coherence with external coherence, kind of like the tuning of an instrument to get clear harmonics.  It certainly reminds me of string theory with the multi-dimensional nested ‘strings’ with a harmony of their vibratory energy patterns.

He is making progress in finding himself in green 1 more of the time.  He can pretty much stay in that mode when he is on a walk.  He has found himself in it after he exercises at the Y.  After he plays music, even if he feels frustrated by the experience.  When he is working at the computer he is in 3 or 4 and occasionally 2, and the green continues to improve.

He usually gets very tremory and visibly anxious when anyone asks him about his PD, but at the Y after exercising, while watching his little grandson play, a friend from our yoga class, (who is also an acupuncture instructor, and we have been consulting with her all along on the PD), came up to him after I told her about the emSpace, and wanted to see the gizmo.  When he pulled it out of his pocket he was in green 1, even though he was discussing PD.  He did say he felt ’safe’ discussing it with her.  Green 1 seems to be happening a little more often than it was at first.

He has been away since Monday, and I talked to him last night.  He took 20 mg propreanol both days he was working, and said that things are going OK, but he is finding himself in green 4 most of the time, like you predicted.  He sounded exhausted to me, but it was late, and he said his biggest day was today.  He returns late Thursday, and we are going to the beach for the long weekend.  I’ll let you know if he gets the ‘rebound’ you predicted from being off the propreanol.

We are just starting into week 3, so if it happens in 6 weeks there will be jubilation over here.  How is your other person doing who was in a similar place to Bill?

On another note, here is a link to a study that says what you have been saying, essentially that dopaminergic drugs give you parkinsonism:
“L-DOPA improves symptoms by boosting the amount of dopamine released by the cells. As long as dopamine is confined inside the compartments before it is released, it is safe.   Outside the compartments in the cell’s cytoplasm, however, Drs. Sulzer and Mosharov found that dopamine – in concert with calcium and alpha-synuclein – is toxic.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429132222.htm

May 7th:

Hi jj,
Bill spent about 15 minutes trying out advanced mode.  He was able to go green easily, but the level markers never got less than 4.  However, the slider did have a long slide sometimes, which may have been a prelude to the larger wave amplitude, but the indicators stayed on 4.  He didn’t notice any change in regard to his tremor during that time.  His tremor stays going all day long now, and stops when he sleeps or zones out at the end of the day.

However, he did say that in the last two or three days his tremor does seem a little better over all and he has a little more mouse control at the computer than he has had up to now.  He seems to be more able to calm himself a bit and he can keep the mouse pressed down to drag better than before.  He went to Chi Gong last night, and that always seems to help a little for that evening and the next day or days.

I have noticed that in the evenings when we sit together and he is having a hard time with his tremor, I can reach over and barely touch his hand and the tremor stops almost immediately.  Before, when I was doing tui-na everyday, it could take many minutes, up to an hour before the tremor would calm.  This instant relief also happens before he goes to bed.  Often, he is in a pre-sleep calm state when I get in bed, and if we talk a little he will start up tremoring.  With practically a hair touch to his hand, arm or leg the tremor will now stop, as if it remembers all the tui-na from before.  I can feel it go into coherence like melting butter.  I keep telling him he can remember the feeling even when I don’t touch him, but so far he can’t conjure it up on his own.

He wanted me to say that to him it feels like when he is doing yoga breathing, it clears his mind of thoughts and goes green.  He holds the abdomen a certain way and it helps him.  He seems to thing that emptiness, or positive emotions both help to get to green.

C

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:10 PM, jj <pdinfo@cruzio.com> wrote:

great feedback.

interesting about being green but with a setting of “4″ in advanced mode. basically , that says that the heart is being controlled, not allowed to go frantic, which is what one sees in sympathetic mode. instead, he is highly controlled, and unable to let his heart respond to the world (his low heart rate variability).

that fits with the other patient who’s doing this now. high level of control, and not influenced by (open to) the vibrations going on around. this is NOT sympathetic mode. this is dissociated – way more obscure,
in terms of a holding pattern.

this is very interesting. i’m excited. thanks for the feedback.
i’m saving your emails, of course.
love,
jj

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 9:04 AM, wrote:

The good news this morning is that he is leaving it in advance mode
all the time now, and he is more able to go to 3 sometimes.

This is a fabulous healing tool.  I can’t wait for Bill to be done using it so my daughter can try it.  She has mood and personality disorders that I think would respond very well.  I told my friend with a teen son who has Asbergers, and she was very excited as well.

Jj’s  comment:
great progress. excellent.
May 8, Carol wrote:

More interesting stuff to report:

Bill took the gizmo on a walk this morning.  He kept it in his pocket. He could hear the beeps and tell that it was harder to keep it incoherence while he was walking.  BUT, when he took it out of his pocket and looked at the lights, he was in 1 in the advanced mode!

He definitely felt the ‘buzz’ of all the new life budding all around him in the spring, and that ‘buzz’ seems to be what corresponds to the 1, what you call ‘heart opening’.  It corresponds to your predictions. He came home, felt tired and took a nap.
HUZAH!!!!!
Carol

On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 11:55 AM, jj wrote:

very good! many PDers report that they are able to move most easily when they are out walking. i wonder if this is because they need to keep their heart open in order to enjoy the surroundings.   interesting!

love,
jj

Hi jj,

Over the weekend Bill was able to get into HRV 1 three times, but al of those three times he was in red.  All of those times wer surprising to him, like when he was walking, at the end of another walk and after a live Gustav Mahler symphony!  All of those times he was I red, not even blue.  He has not been able to rub his tummy and pat his head and get to 1, green yet.  Do you think they are mutually exclusive?  I would think they would go together.  How has HRV gone for you as a recovered person?

Currently, he is very frustrated by the constant tremor (nothing new there) but is noticing more smells, does not have to pee as often, and has a micro more arm swing.  He picked up his penny whistle this weekend and sounded good!  It only lasted for part of the song before his hands went back to molasses, but the first part sounded up-tempo and accurate.

Meanwhile, here is a link to Melody’s (our acupuncturist’s) dad’s site: http://www.lamalar.com/Cosmic_Chakras.html  I thought you might enjoy it as I did.

much love,
carol

May 12, 2009, from jj:

i can easily stay in green indefinitely, and in advanced mode i’m in the fully variable (one light, full width roaming light) position, and stay there. another fully recovered PDer sat down with the device in regular mode, and kept it in green indefinitely – even as i upped it from level 1 to level 2, to level 3, and then to level 4. it took him a few moments to “figure out ” what “they wanted” to stay in the green at level 4, but once he understood the level of coherence they wanted, he put it in green and it stayed there. he was in green for half an hour. he was able to talk and laugh and keep it in the green. then again, he’s been meditating for nearly thirty years. it’s interesting to point out that he did develop PD despite the meditation. and many of our PD patients had been doing Tai Qi, yoga, or various forms of meditation for decades, and still developed parkinson’s. so these methods aren’t necessarily a PD prevention – nor do they cure PD necessarily. but if a certain level of increased surrender is brought to the practice, or if the foot injury is healed, then the meditation (or whatever) is finally able to go deeper.

bill’s situation is bearing out our hypothesis: people with PD are NOT usually in sympathetic mode – they’ re in dissociative. (minimized heart rate variability). and when they do allow themselves to have full range of feeling – or even close, they go into sympathetic. most people, when fully feeling (widest range of heart rate variability), are in parasympathetic. that’s what fully feeling is supposed to be about.

instead, in bill and in the other PDer i’ve used the machine on, heart “able to appreciate what’s going on around” (high heart rate variability) is *do-able*, but linked with stress (danger: low coherence).

so it all makes sense.

really , really gratifying to have a hypothesis borne out with measurement!

thanks so much,
jj

from carol:
Thanks!

We now have the goal for him.

I forgot to tell you one more thing about last week.  After a fairly difficult yoga class last Thursday, Bill told me he really ENJOYED the entire class for perhaps the first time since his surgeries rather than feeling he ought to do it because it was good for him.  Also, I am noticing more spontaneous moments of playful silliness with his grandson and in general.

Carol

from jj:  All Good!

He continues to like using the emSpace, and says it is definitely helping him improve his percentage of being in the green (in parasympathetic mode).  It is a good teaching tool because it still surprises him sometimes as it is not always how he might have expected it to feel.

He continues to show symptoms of recovery, like after he goes for a
long walk, his bicep will be very sore, and even some big twitches.
He said he could actually feel a little more fluidity and weight in his arm
swing.  He really enjoyed the arm slapping twists in a substitute yoga
instructor’s warm up on Saturday.

However, certain things, like his voice is much more quiet, are
puzzling.  Could the voice quietness be due to limp rather than rigid
muscles?  Another is the continued (seemingly devolving) lack of
dexterity in his hands and tremor of the hand and foot.  Could
limpness in muscle tone + internal tremor actually amplify the
tremoring in anxious moments?  Could limpness explain the continuing
lack of dexterity?

He is still flooded with anxieties in certain moments, and I have been
re-reading the recovery symptom chapters.  I think perhaps he is still
responding emotionally like an 11 year old sometimes.  Trust is
definitely not there 100%, but it continues to grow, two steps forward
and one back.  However, he does continue to work really, really hard
(perhaps stoically?) at recovery.

The mysteries continue….

Carol

reply from jj:

excellent report.

the voice may disappear, and then boom out. voice control may be irregular for a while during the changes he’s going through. limpness, too. as i wrote in the recovery symptoms section, recovery is not fun, and it can even be painful. it’s NOT what people think it should be (fanfares, glory, youthful vigor). it’s consequences. but for my money, it’s WAY better than further degeneration into parkinson’s. and what a fantastic tool for self assessment. i’ve never heard of a better.

jj

from carol:

He just finished his morning yoga session and said he could smell body
odor on his mat for the first time!

C.

May 1, from jj:
as for me feeling despondant when i was sleeping 18 hours a day, no.

i was very clear that, prior to beginning to recover, i had been edgy. now, i was profoundly tired. my motto was, “if this is the opposite of parkinson’s, then it’s wonderful – no matter how unpleasant it is.

as you will notice, if you read through the chapters on recovery symptoms, they are counterintuitive and unpleasant. when coming to terms with pains and problems that have been mentally avoided for decades, pain, exhaustion, etc  is inevitable.

because i saw the deep need for rest as the opposite of my previous, guilty-if-not-moving-fast behavior, i was fascinated by it. honestly. fascinated. i just thought it was so WEIRD. but not depression. when i surrendered to the Universal Heart, when my recovery started, i utterly decided that whatever happened was for the best, and i was along for the ride. my role was NOT to judge if i was getting better or worse. my role was to feel love. Period. end of discussion. evaluating everything in terms of better or worse would be classic PD behavior – and i wasn’t going to go there any more. if i got worse, so what? i was with God.
clearly, bill does not  yet trust Love, or God, with his life.

hope this helps,

May 1, from carol:
Hi jj,

Here is the day 4 report.  Bill is more able to keep it in green even
when he is looking right at the light.  He also is experiencing
extreme fatigue at times during the day, which distresses him even
though we both know it is a symptom of recovery.  Under controlled
slightly stressful situations like reading the newspaper in the
morning, or watching news on TV at night, or non-stressful typing, he
is more able to go green compared to earlier in the week.

However, when he was having a phone interview and having to juggle a
lot of input at once, his symptoms became distressfully extreme, and
he was not able to calm himself and experienced despondency over his
apparent worsening.  Bill seems to still harbor the fear that when he
experiences stronger tremors, or a new big twitch in his arm or
exhaustion that it must mean the Parkinson’s is defeating him, or
might be defeating him.

When you were going through the weird symptoms of recovery, did you
ever consider that things might be getting worse, or get bummed out
about the possibility?  He thinks his symptoms are twice as bad as
they were last summer.  I think there are times when his thought
patterns get out of hand, and it closes off access to dopamine.

April 30, from carol:
I spoke to Bill about a measurement system, and his response was that
the gizmo is a better training system than a monitoring system.  It
does have an ability to tell you what percent of any given session was
in green, but he feels that leaving it on all the time (as an
observation system) would be a detriment to its ability to train
because it actually makes it harder to get the buzz when it is on, but
he can tell more now when he is in ‘coherence’ when the system is off.

I’m not sure it would work as a measurement system if it was clipped
on the ear all day, and placed in the pocket with the signals off.
I’m not sure what the interval of a session would be.  Perhaps, you
could use it as a training system for a couple of weeks or so, and
then use it as an observation system before and after.

Carol

April 30, from jj:
tired? a very good sign. tired is the opposite of agitated.

and when ever he’s in parasympathetic mode, his body is in a world of healing. as in, go-to-bed, you’ve been injured.

of course, that mode will feel new and frightening to him, unless he can learn to go-with-the-flow …or sh0ould i say, go-with-the-buzz…

April 30, from carol:
One other thing,  Bill is much more tired today.  I reminded him that
being tired was a symptom of recovery, but it was of little comfort to
him.  However, I think it might be a very good sign.

His description of being in green is he feels the ‘buzz’ that he feels
when he sees the new green leaves shimmering, or the red leaves
shimmering in the fall or something beautiful.

How was that transition for you?  Pre- and post-shift?  How much of
the day were you able to consciously feel the ‘buzz’ and did the
tiredness increase at that point, or at the point of the foot healing?

April 30, from jj:
w/re the vagus nerve health, if his stomach is still functional, the vagus nerve is probably OK. serious blockage in the vagus nerve can cause loss of consciousness and projectile vomiting. he’s probably OK.

thanks for your input. i’m hoping to work with the heartmath people to get THEM to work on developing a timing/recording device. shouldn’t be so hard…

ha ha.

that way, a person could use the device all day, and at the end of the day, see how much time he spent in what.

i DO find it significant that you can make it go green easily, and he can’t do it the same way that you can. hopefully, this will be a powerful tool for retraining purposes.

April 30, from carol:
I’ll brainstorm that with him.  I don’t think it is convenient to do
it 24-7, but he is doing it much more than they say to.  We will try
to figure out a way to measure it for you.

When I do it, I can make it turn green when I look at it, but he
can’t.  He can make it go green, but not while he is looking.  My gut
says that is significant.  When he is conscious of it, his system
reverts to sympathetic as a re-set.  I think the shift we are looking
for is when he can do a conscious re-set to green, I think that will
be the point when he will be in parasympathetic dominant, or at least
the tipping point where he can make the conscious choice to shift.
I’m guessing it may be more important than the percentage of time
spent in green.

One thing that Bill may have going on as a complication is his vagus
nerve may have been damaged somehow by the ball of blood as big as an
orange around his aorta last March.  I have asked his cardiologist to
check the records to see if that might perhaps be a complication to
his healing.  I did look up where the vagus nerve goes, and it goes
right behind the aorta.  I’ll let you know if we find anything
specific.

I’ll give you reports day by day.

C.

April, 30 from jj:
i am hoping that you can keep even daily postings or memos w/re how bill is doing with the device.

i am going to order several of them today, and start using them on volunteers as soon as possible.
we have always felt that getting rid of the heart problem is far more important than getting rid of the foot problem. the final chapter of the recovery book, when it’s written, will make that evident.

if we get consistent results, this will allow us to present a paper with “western” evidence.
our first research will need to be a study that just evaluates the amount of time PDers spend in the non-green mode, compared to the average.

if there is ANY way you can think of to meausre the amount of time spent in red or green, it would be hugely valuable.

looking ahead,
jj

Apr 30 from carol:

Yes, he has found a way to do that.  I’m not sure it extends to more
stressful phone conference notes or interviews, but for run of the
mill typing he is in the green more/some of the time.

He went to a professional event yesterday, and he was just fine for
most of it (he was not presenting) but, when a colleague asked him
about his health, he immediately started tremoring.  I think
consciousness may be the key.  When he can consciously change from red
to green in a stressful situation just by ‘deciding to’, I think he
will be over the hump.  I don’t think he is quite there, but by
knowing what ‘in the green’ feels like, and working on increasing it
daily, we are moving closer to that happy day.  Just on the basis of
that alone, I would certainly recommend the device to anyone who wants
to attempt recovery.  I would advise them to get one as soon as they
possibly can, even before the channel is restored. Can you think of
any reason to wait?

Much love,
Carol
April 29, jj:
can he type more easily in “green” mode?

jj

April 29, from carol:

After two days of use, he finds he is more able to stay in the green.
He says it surprised him, and what he thought would be the green was
not.  He guessed that yesterday he was in the green about 20-30% of
the time, so he has a ways to go.  It has been helpful to use while
typing, he was able to find a brain mode to type in that was green,
and this was a big success.

Carol

April 28, after gizmo blog report, from jj:

great!!! that sounds like an excellent product, and i will happily recommend it if…. bill finds that he is able to make improvements in the amount of time that he stays in the green zone. bill will be our guinea pig.

i’m VERY excited about this.

love and gratitude,
jj

April 17, from carol:

The tremors have improved over the last several days, but I couldn’t
say it was that that worked.  When I try to remind him to preface a
statement with that, he does have resistance to it.  However, he liked
the chopstick in his mouth, the QiGong class, and I watched the videos
of a PD conference in Houston on exercise, creativity, and community
engagement and how it makes the dopamine receptors multiply.(
http://event.netbriefings.com/event/pdf/Archives/takingcharge/register.cgi) and gave him the elevator synopsis the other day, and he increased his exercise time, played more music, etc.  So, who knows what it is.
It could just as easily be the 23 day cycle as well. But, most likely
it is all of the above, I suspect.  I do think that that phrasing does
allow the possibility of improvement to creep in to the thoughts.  It
leaves the future more open to whatever happens.

April 17, from jj:

hmmmm… having worked with hundreds of people with PD, i can just hear them saying,  “up until today, my tremors have been getting worse…so why should today be any different? they will continue to worsen – exactly as they have done up until now. ”

let me know if it works,

April 16 from carol:

Yes, I think hearing it from many sources and more continual reminders
will help him.  Also, Melody had some good advice for when he gets
fearful.  She learned from her father to say “Up until today
(complaint)”  Like: ‘up until today, my tremors seemed to be getting
worse’.
That way the assumptions about the future seem lighter.

It might be something you could pass on to others with this struggle.

Carol

April 16 after blog report from jj:

GREAT!!!!!
keep it up.

maybe if bill hears it from enough places – and hears it in terms of something about which something can be done, (instead of dwelling on the incurability of it all), it will finally sink in – he can cure himself, but he will have to make some changes.

thanks for writing,

April 13, from carol:

Sigh, yes, I believe I found out that side effect the last time I
convinced him not to do it.  I’ll remind him again.  Bill is really
working the program, but his symptoms, except for those exception days
and times are steadily worsening, he just explained today.  The tremor
and now his voice is going soft again.  He says his fingers type much
slower than last December.  The 24/7 seems to be very illusive.  He
still has his eyes on the prize and gives thanks for his PD in many
ways each day.  My observation is it seems fairly stable with moments
of worse tremor, but his typing is somewhat measurably worse.  I like
the pencil idea.  Maybe it will be a slow drip of improving dopamine
production capability.

Carol

April 13, from jj:

as for the anticholinergics, yes, they are not addictive. however, be aware that most of them also cause some degree of slowing of the mental faculties.
i just saw a patient last week who is now taking anticholinergics. every other sentence of his was “i just lost my train of thought” or “what? i can’t remember what you just said.” the  guy is youngish, very sharp mind. i’d never seen him like that.  the mental fogginess started with the anticholinergics. but that’s how they work – they make you less able to be anxious, in part, because you can’t stay focused on whatever makes you anxious. but you also can’t stay focused on what you’re trying to learn or teach… as with most medications, a double-edged sword.  the drugs  giveth and the drugs taketh away….

love,
jj

April 13:

Bill wanted me to check with you about starting an anticholinergic like benedryl or Inderol.  He would use it only on those public occasions that cause him such grief.  I seem to recall that in your book, the anticholenergics were not on the banned list.

Mar. 13:

jj:

I have started corresponding with a few people on the Patients Like Me site that are using the PD Recovery protocol.  I am also lobbying the site administrators to do a self-administered study on the protocol like they have done for low dose lithium with the ALS community.  So far, it is an uphill battle, but with 3300 PD patients and more new ones joining each week, I think it is an excellent forum, and I troll for those who have not yet started the meds to send them to your site whenever I can.

love to you and the team!  Thanks, thanks, thanks, one million times, and hugs and kisses around!

Carol

Excerpts from Dissolving the Heart-Mind from Michael Winn:
What does it mean to dissolve the heart-mind, and why would Daoists even want to do that? The simplest answer is that the heart-mind has become rigid or dysfunctional in some way, and this obstructs the free flow of qi within the individual. In the medical model of dissolving the stuck patterns using acupuncture, herbs, or massage, the qi can flow more easily, improving both mental and physical health.
In the martial model, repeated training of the heart-mind using movement supports the qi to be expressed more powerfully in relation to others.

In the spiritual model, excess fixity of the heart-mind may obstruct the unfolding of ones spiritual essence or moral power (de). Heart-mind rigidity prevents exchange of qi between the individual as microcosm and the collective macrocosm of Nature and Humanity.  Zhuangzi advocates getting rid of the mind of everyday life (sheng zhi xin) in order to fly on the wings of the Dao. So dissolving the heart-mind allows spontaneous change to happen between the individual and the environment. The dissolving process is a spiritual prerequisite to cultivating a wu wei attitude of openness that promotes effortless change, a fundamental value of Daoists.

Standing forms of qigong are more challenging, as the mind is forced to wait in stillness and give up its impatience to physically move, while it is simultaneously challenged by gravity. What happens eventually is the qi within the vertically aligned body begins to create micro-movements between the poles of Heaven and Earth. This produces an energetic detoxifying effect that gradually intensifies and breaks up old heart-mind patterns. Standing still also allows the ordinary mind to observe and release tension within the layers of the body’s vital organ and muscular-skeletal structure, which in busy everyday life it would not do.
……
At higher levels of practice, it goes far beyond standing empty-minded, using the vertical stance to absorb qi from the earth into the heels, which is then circulated in the Microcosmic Orbit. The historicity of this practice dates back to Laozi: The Sage breathes through his heels. The standing method of dissolving is also useful in resolving ancestral issues stored in the bone marrow and blood. In Chinese theory, many heart-mind imbalances may in reality be ancestors seeking expression and completion. (Winn 2003)

…. The Inner Smile is a method of dissolving this false outer layer of the heart-mind and opening the spontaneous spiritual joy of the inner heart (ling), perhaps best translated as soul……

In my own teaching I began adding a yang phase, i.e., reversing direction, and radiating from the heart a smiling wave beyond the body. (Winn 2003) This yang version of the Inner Smiles embraces everything outside the body, layer by layer: ones aura, the room, ones family, village, one’s enemies, the country; the planets, moon, sun, stars, and the blackness beyond. Smiling outwardly to ones community and natural world offers a context for unconditionally accepting ones worldly destiny. The adept then flips this perspective, reversing again the direction of the flow of acceptance, smiling through layers of the outer world back into the physical body. Finally this smiling wave dissolves back into the pre-natal formless sea of qi in the dantian.
Zuowang practice helps the adept to surrender to the impersonal qi-field of heaven and earth…… In zuowang the emphasis is more on process, on cultivating spontaneity and openness to ever-changing currents of the qi-field. The dissolving of the heart-mind is achieved by allowing each thought, feeling or sensation to manifest without resistance, and then surrender it to the larger flow of the qi-field to be creatively transformed…… Zuowang means to forget the myriad projections, it consists in cutting out all delusions and firmly fixating ones mind. Once the mind is firmly fixated, there is nothing beneath it but the One, and nothing above it but emptiness. It will never stir, even when it is shaken.

Both Chinese medicine and neidan theory map out these forces below as the yin-yang and five phases qi-flow that regulate the heart-mind. They are the vital organ orbs of the heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys, and liver and their partners the bowel spirits who comprise the twelve officials. They behave much like real politicians and bureaucrats. Collectively their job is to regulate the heart-mind, yet paradoxically they embody the very patterns of resistance and corruption that need to be dissolved when they block healthy change. But the heart-mind lacks the will to completely dissolve itself. Thus the deeper level of ling or soul must first be accessed. This view of the soul is becoming increasingly popular with modern Daoist healers in the West (Sha 2006).

In the Daoist alchemy model the human ability to concentrate qi to dissolve obstructive patterns in itself doesn’t require perfection or absolute emptiness of mind in order to be successful. Dissolving is a process, not an end goal or fixed state. The heart-mind needs enough integrity to hold the center while absorbing higher cosmic forces, even if it is not yet physically, morally or spiritually perfected. In fact it may be the very flaws in the adepts heart-mind that guide the alchemical method of internal refining that is most successful.

They now smile on behalf of the Dao, radiating a feeling of unconditional acceptance from the primordial qi-field. This smiling radiates a neutral force that lubricates the yin-yang qi flowing in all dimensions of Heaven, Earth, Humanity, and personal heart-mind.

This is a merger of the sages personal heart-mind with the mind of Dao. It implies that humanity’s highest destiny is to elevate Heaven and Earth with its purity of heart and the unique human ability to feel personal love/acceptance of the myriad beings. For Westerners, the Inner Smiles heart-centeredness and unconditional openness offers a bridge between Daoism and Christian teachings of unconditional love.

In this light, dissolving the heart-mind in all of the models considered is not meant to get rid of the heart-mind, but to replace the old patterns with a more expanded, all-embracing mode. The dissolving process is designed to make the heart-mind pliable enough to respond to the qi-field, thus empowering it to serve the Dao of Humanity in its ceaseless creativity and self-exploration.

From a later newsletter: ‘Chi flow’s naturally’ a newsletter by Michael Winn:

ChiFlowsNaturally@HealingDao.com

“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”
    Taoist Sage, 200 B.C

“Western science and medicine could be considered a form of external alchemy: ingenious at transforming matter and producing a surplus of magical technological goods, yet unable to fill human hearts.”

You can order this “must have” Internal Alchemy book  in the “Top Taoism Books” on his website: www.healingtaousa.com/tpp/blk7.html is the product page.

Large passages from his newsletter on the new book he recommends above:
Preface to Internal Alchemy Book
This book brings together the leading scholars in the field. It gives a thorough and easily accessible introduction, with a survey of cultivation methods that form the backbone of internal alchemy. It presents the major schools and discussion of key concepts, such as mind, inner nature, and destiny.

Other chapters focus on the emergence of spirit through the top of the head, the activation of internal visions in Thunder Rites, the sexual commingling of energies in duo-cultivation, body visions and techniques employed by women, contemporary alchemy in China and its transmission in the West. It concludes with comparative studies on Kundalini Yoga and Hermeticism.

PREFACE by Livia Kohn & Robin Wang

“…..The goal of internal alchemy is to identify, control, modify, and eventually transform subtle energies as they are present in the human body-mind. As scientists in biology and medicine increasingly come to see the body as an energetic system, a “living matrix” made up of bioelectricity and bioenergy, Daoist neidan has an important contribution to make.

Neidan can inspire and guide theory and practice in rapidly developing new fields, such as energy medicine and energy psychology. The only obstacle to integrating millennia of traditional Daoist knowledge and experimentation into the modern discourse is the lack of accessible presentations on the subject. That is changing with this volume”.

Read entire preface (3 pages). Click on: www.healingdao.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=91

What’s Inside this book? Table of Contents

Internal Alchemy: Self, Society, and the Quest for Immortality

Livia Kohn and Robin Wang, Editors

TABLE of CONTENTS

1. Modes of Mutation: Restructuring the Energy Body -Livia Kohn
2. Internal Landscapes   – Sara Neswald
3. Neidan History and Early Lineages   – Guangbao Zhang
4. Southern School: Cultivating Mind and Inner Nature   – Xichen Lu
5. Neidan Methods for Opening the Gate of Heaven   – Stephen Eskildsen
6. Summoning the Thunder Generals & Internal Alchemy   – Shinyi Chao
7. Numinous Father and Holy Mother: Duo-Cultivation Practice   – Xun Liu
8. Female Alchemy: An Introduction    – Elena Valussi
9. To Become a Female Daoist Master: Kundao in Training   – Robin Wang
10. Daoist Internal Alchemy in the West    – Michael Winn
11. Kundalini and the Complete Maturation of the Spiritual Body  – Stuart Sovatsky
12. Western Parallels: The Esoteric Teachings of Hermeticism   – Althea Northage-Orr

note: (…) denotes where original text has been cut. Original text is twice as long as this excerpt.

Daoist Internal Alchemy in the West (abridged chapter)
by Michael Winn

The Dao is very great, for it offers human beings 3,600 pathways. Each pathway has 10,000 methods to help us become who we truly are. — Daoist saying

In 1980, I was introduced to Mantak Chia in his tiny office in New York’s Chinatown. A friend had alerted me his energy was “off the charts,” and looking for a writer. A 36-year old Thai Chinese Daoist, Chia made his living doing energetic healing. Dr. Young, a Chinese MD with an office next door, sent Chia patients with difficult diseases Western medicine could not cure. Many recovered their health (Young 1984). I had never met a Daoist. “What do you teach?” I asked Mantak Chia. “Immortality,” he replied without hesitation.

I looked at him skeptically. I was into Kundalini yoga, at the time still an underground culture. My yoga friends and the popular Indian gurus of the day only talked about enlightenment. “In China we have records of many hundreds of immortals. In the West, they only talk about one: Jesus,” Chia added, as if his cultural boast allayed my skepticism.

I took the bait, and signed up for the first class ever offered to Western students, on the Microcosmic Orbit. Chia warned me it was only “kindergarten” in the One Cloud system of Daoist internal alchemy. I later realized the Orbit was the piece missing from Indian Kundalini yoga practice, which directs all qi to flow up cakras located in the fire channel of the spine, then out the crown. The Daoist approach re-circulates Heaven-qi back down the crown into the water channel in the chest, connects to Earth-qi at the perineum, then spirals it back up the spine. The Orbit turns the human body into a refinery of whirling qi mixing fire and water qi.
Within two years I was practicing One Cloud’s second formula, Lesser Water and Fire, in which the qi moves into a third neutral channel, the Penetrating Vessel in the center of the body. The fire and water qi are sexually coupled and an alchemical elixir forms. It created a wonderfully warm glowing feeling in my body, unlike any of the many other spiritual practices I had experimented with.

Thus began a lifelong journey in which I became an adept, teacher, scholar, and witness to the unfolding of neidan culture in the West. In addition to documenting One Cloud’s Seven Alchemy Formulas for Immortality spread widely in the West by Chia’s Healing Tao organization, and other streams of Daoist alchemy in the English-speaking West, I will address two other issues.
One: how is Daoist internal alchemy tied to Chinese culture and language? Has the appropriation of neidan resulted in different insights or experiences by Western adepts, who may cultivate energy bodies differently from Chinese adepts? Two: are immortals real, or merely a Chinese cultural projection of a deep human desire to survive death? If immortals are real, are Western adepts in contact with them?

Western Growth of Alchemy
In 2008, twenty-eight years after my meeting Mantak Chia, yoga and Indian notions of enlightenment had surfaced into mainstream American culture, with 12 million yoga practitioners and glossy magazines. Numerous Hindu and Buddhist centers of meditation had flourished, died, and been replaced by new ones. Daoist internal alchemy had emerged from its “doesn’t exist” status, but was barely visible on the cultural horizon.

Its biggest presence was the thousand Healing Tao instructors Mantak Chia had certified globally in at least the first formula of One Cloud’s neidan system. In 1980, Chia planned to write a single book. I ended up editing or co-writing his first seven books. By 2008 he had published thirty-three books and dozens of videos….

Oriental healing schools have proliferated. Many are aware Daoist neidan gong, or “skill with the internal elixir,” is considered the pinnacle of self-realization and healing in China. Why don’t they teach neidan? The training is not well understood, and its complexity and long progressive work make it difficult to commercialize in the alternative healing market. There is an acupuncture textbook Nourishing Destiny: The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine, inspired by Zhang Boduan’s Four Hundred Words on the Gold Elixir (Jarrett 1999). It highlights neidan, also translated as “internal medicine,” as the highest distillation of Chinese medical principles….

Chinese alchemical literature is fascinating but maddeningly obscure. It wears two masks simultaneously, one promising mystical illumination and immortality, the other promising a spiritual science that systematically bridges the dark gulf between a fragile human mind in a mortal body and the vast eternal life of the cosmos. “Spiritual science” implies a practicality especially attractive to Westerners. Scientific materialism has become a de facto standard of truth often pitted against religious faith. Neidan offers a bridge between the two.

The Process of Alchemical Transmutation
Daoist alchemy seeks to reconcile the creative tension between impersonal nature and the personal human. It simultaneously embraces the mystical oneness or primal chaos of Dao, expressed by an all-penetrating primordial qi-field, and many individual bodies, each with a unique destiny, arising within that field. External alchemy can help heal individual human bodies, but cannot deliver the experience of oneness or chaos. Death and disease could be seen in this context as unconscious ways to return to oneness.

Neidan seeks to achieve this return consciously, by embracing the life force at its deepest level of ever-changing process. Western science and medicine could be considered a form of external alchemy: ingenious at transforming matter and producing a surplus of magical technological goods, yet unable to fill human hearts.

Neidan serves to speed the completion of both personal worldly destiny (ming) and the realization of one’s spiritual essence or inner nature (xing) arising from the impersonal origin. What distinguishes Daoist neidan from other forms of meditation is that it traditionally involves the creation of a dan. This is variously described as an elixir, pearl, or egg in which the adept’s worldly and spiritual destiny are integrated.

This elixir or pearl is a vessel for the highest authentic essence of a human, a lifetime of wisdom condensed into a single spiritual drop. It’s vibrational purity and integration of spirit and matter is what survives death and allows for spiritual immortality. The elixir is progressively cooked or refined internally with different methods and goes through different stages.

In One Cloud’s Seven Alchemy formulas, the first popular neidan system in the West, primal Water and Fire are caused to merge with each other in an explicitly sexual internal coupling. This union of yin and yang is an alchemical marriage of inner male and inner female. The adept gets “spiritually pregnant” and forms an immortal embryo in the belly center or elixir field (dantian). This births an immortal child in the adept’s core channel, which progressively moves upward. It matures over many years into a sage or immortal at the solar plexus, the heart, third eye, and crown.

The inner sage may achieve different levels of immortality – human, earthly, heavenly, full celestial, or complete merging with Dao. Different yin-yang forces are coupled at each level; male-female sexual coupling evolves to a purer level, i.e., becomes sun-moon coupling, and continues into humanity collectively coupling its soul forces with planetary and star beings.

These levels may be understood as metaphors for the evolution of human consciousness beyond its mortal limitations. After physical death, spiritual immortals merge into the vast ocean of cosmic consciousness but continue to evolve and create within the greater process of Dao. Physical immortality is not the goal; that would be too fixed and thus not aligned with an ever-changing Dao. Soul immortality would be a mid-level achievement that results in conscious re-incarnation on earth, such as is used by Tibetans to preserve their spiritual culture.

Daoist rebirth is a long, gradual process, in which the adept moves inward by stages, refining the polarized and corrupted qi of postnatal after-Heaven (physical plane) into the balanced and purified qi of the prenatal stage Before Heaven, a middle plane that holds all possible forms waiting to birth. The adept finally penetrates to the pure field of the original energetic trinity of primordial origin.
This is the full return to original being, a merger with the cosmic egg or gourd before it cracked open. In some cosmologies, beyond this primal egg lies the Daoist notion of supreme mystery or Unknowable Ultimate (wuji), the source from which the primal trinity of the qi-field arises.

(carol here – I did not read the whole book, but found these excerpts quite interesting, and his Inner Smile meditations have been helpful to Bill)